Startup Circle: How Leegality is transforming paperwork and saved costs

Leegality is a digital document workflow startup that allows companies to digitise document logistics. Its offerings such as eStamp, Bharat Sign, eSign, Digital Stamping, Execution Automation, Sign Security, and Storage enable companies to digitally sign documents which in turn helps companies to save costs and improve productivity and efficiency. Today, the Leegality Document Infrastructure is deployed in over 2000 Indian businesses, including entities from 8 out of the top 10 banking conglomerates in India.

Shivam Singla is a lawyer who never made it to enrollment due to the paperwork involved. It prompted him to look for a solution through Leegality with the goal of transforming the way businesses conduct paperwork with their customers, business partners, employees and investors. Under Shivam’s leadership as CEO and Founder, Leegality has rapidly grown its revenues by 20x since FY 2019. It has maintained a cash flow positive balance sheet for the last 4 quarters - and has a rapidly growing team of more than 150 people.

Speaking to CIOL, Shivam Singla, CEO and Founder, Leegality, has shared his views on how Leegality Document Infrastructure is deployed in over 2000 Indian businesses also he talked about his startup journey so far.

Tell us about Leegality and your offerings. Tell us about the team

Signed agreements, forms, and other legal documentation are the foundation of modern commercial transactions. Unfortunately, this signing process mostly happens on paper, even for digital work. This physical process causes delays, bogs down business teams, increases costs and creates legal risk for Indian businesses - across all sectors - on a daily basis.

We founded Leegality to completely eliminate this problem. At Leegality, we provide a unified platform that allows Indian businesses to digitally transform their paperwork execution process (creation, signing, stamping, storage etc.) in a fast, easy and compliant way.

Today, Leegality is the document infrastructure provider to over 2000 Indian businesses, including group entities from 8 out of the top 10 banking conglomerates in India. We recently raised USD 5 million from IIFL Fintech Fund and utilise the funds to accelerate customer acquisition, invest in product development, and rapidly enhance customer experience.

Please run us through your journey with Leegality and when you started Leegality.

My journey as an entrepreneur started during my college years when I pursued my academic interests while taking on passion projects on the side. It was during this time that I encountered the same challenges that many of us face with banking processes - they were time-consuming and involved a lot of paperwork.

I realized that there was an opportunity to digitize these processes for the convenience of consumers who could sign documents from the comfort of their homes. But I soon discovered that compliance issues like signing and stamping made it difficult to fully embrace digital documentation.

This realization led me to create Leegality - a platform that provides businesses with a comprehensive digital document infrastructure. With Leegality, businesses can easily deploy critical digital execution capabilities like eSign, Digital Stamping, Execution Automation, Sign Security, Storage, and more in a quick, easy and compliant manner.

We are proud to have raised two rounds of funding to support our business growth and currently serve over 2000 businesses across India. Our platform has already replaced 2 million physical signatures each month, freeing up businesses from the burden of paperwork and helping them achieve greater efficiency and productivity.

Tell us about your geographic reach?

Right now we are focused on providing solutions for India. Within India, we are being used in each and every State and most Union Territories. More than 20 million unique individuals have eSigned a document via Leegality till date.

What is your market positioning and brand USP?

Leegality is a document infrastructure platform that enables Indian businesses to digitally transform their paperwork processes in a fast, easy and compliant manner. Our USP is 3-fold - a) We are engineered to meet the unique compliance needs of Indian businesses, b) We are operationally flexible to meet the needs of the unique workflow of Indian businesses, and c) Our product and services suite is designed to help businesses actually scale up usage fast - and not get stuck in digital transformation inertia that often happens with new software.

How has the digital infrastructure transformed paperwork and saved costs?

In recent years, India has made significant progress in building its digital infrastructure. Government initiatives such as Digital India have enabled the widespread adoption of digital services across the country and boosted the adoption of digital infrastructure. Initiatives such as Electronic Document Management, E-Governance, Electronic payments, and electronic signatures have enabled organisations to reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of paperwork they generate and handle. This has led to significant cost savings, improved efficiency, and increased transparency.

Paperwork - in many ways - is the last frontier of digitization.

Leveraging the Information Technology Act, we have built a ‘Made for India, for India’ SaaS solution that offers businesses a unified platform to digitise every layer of the paperwork journey – across verticals and use cases. This means that electronic signatures, electronic stamp duty, document automation, document assembly, and more – can be brought under one roof. Companies get a one-stop solution to digitally transform their paperwork processes across verticals and use cases.

What is a user- liveliness check and how does it work?

We offer a Face Capture Authentication layer in our document journeys. User liveliness is a way for us to ensure that the face being put before the camera is an actual face and not a photo or a video of someone.

How does Leegality prevent signature fraud in digital documents?

There are two critical security aspects when it comes to digital paperwork - preventing signature fraud and ensuring maximum enforceability of digital documents. We’ve built unique features designed to combat these aspects.

• Aadhaar/DSC Smart Name Verification: This feature matches the name and other details of the signer with the information in the Aadhaar or DSC certificate. If there is a mismatch, it means the signer has used someone else’s Aadhaar or DSC token and the sign is prevented from being affixed.

• Face Capture: This feature captures the face of the signer and produces it on the Secure Audit Trail. This ensures that the signer feels a level of seriousness and hence cannot later dispute the signature. Our Face Capture is also built in a way that it does not capture “photos” of people - someone’s actual face needs to be there.
• Multi-Factor Authentication This feature sends an OTP to the signer’s alternate contact coordinate (either mobile or email)to authenticate their identity before signing.
• Secure Audit Trail: This records all the actions and events that occur during the document journey, such as who signed, when, where and how. This provides clear evidence of the signing process - that companies can use in regulatory audits and in Court proceedings. Leegality Secure Audit Trails are also digitally signed by Leegality - ensuring that they are presumed to be non-tampered under the Indian Evidence Act.

How to make the documents legally enforceable to be acceptable in the court of law?

To make digital documents easy to enforce in a Court of law, it is very important to ensure the following:

1. Clear authentication mechanisms that the signer must go through before signing
2. Clear consent mechanisms that the signer must go through before signing
3. Clear third-party verifiable audit trail that is acceptable under the Indian Evidence Act
4. Proper digital stamping of documents with adequate stamp duty paid
5. Local Language interface to ensure the signer knows what is happening
6. Granular, step by step traceability of the entire transaction being contained on the Secure Audit Trail

What has 2022 changed for you? How are things now?

In 2022 our growth has accelerated by leaps and bounds. This is primarily for 2 reasons:

a) Businesses are increasingly seeing digital paperwork as a business imperative and

b)When businesses want to switch to digital paperwork, they see Leegality as the only credible solution to solve their needs at scale.

What are your growth priorities for 2023?

While we’ve grown leaps and bounds in the last few years - we’ve still only scratched the surface. The default way to do paperwork in India - in most industries - is still physical. Our mission, for the foreseeable future - will be to make Leegality the default way to do

paperwork in India. So, in reality, our plans for the near future are to continue executing and innovating - providing cutting edge digital document infrastructure for a wider variety of industries.

We’ve also done incredibly well to be cash flow positive for more than a year - largely thanks to our business model, and we are on our way to crossing the 100 Cr revenue run rate by the end of this financial year. We would want to keep enhancing this model and grow the business 10x in the next 2 years in a sustainable way.